


anagapesis

by hellalujah



Series: uncommon words - a collection of prompt fills [4]
Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Falling Out of Love, M/M, Sad Ending, Soulmark AU, Soulmarks, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 07:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8880571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellalujah/pseuds/hellalujah
Summary: (noun) the feeling when one no longer loves someone they once did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> a shorty but a saddy

Mat’s not stupid.

It doesn’t help that Dillon is embarrassingly transparent and far too easy to read, especially when he’s actually trying to hide something. And he’s definitely been hiding something.

They spend so much time together these days and it’s so strange for Mat. It’s been months now, almost a year, and it’s a dizzy realization. He’s… he’s been happy with Dillon. Happier than he has been in years.

Dillon’s mark had started on his hip and Dillon could hardly keep his hands off it at first, when they weren’t anything but friends messing around. He’d been smug about it, maybe. That it was somewhere so private, so intimate.

Mat hadn’t expected the slow stretch and migration up his stomach. Up to his chest. He’d tried to avoid thinking about it and had tried even harder to avoid Dillon knowing until it was gone from his hip entirely and Dillon had stared at the blank space for painful, aching moments. Until Mat had yanked up his shirt and shown him where it’d gone.

He’s never had someone’s mark directly over his heart before. Even Porter’s sweeping brushwork is off to the side, on the ball of his shoulder and across his collarbone a bit but not over his heart. He wasn’t on Porter’s heart either and that was okay.

Dillon’s spread across the left side of his chest, though. Across his sternum and reaching up to his collarbone, a strange abstract mash of wings and ribbons and an hourglass, vividly coloured in rich blacks and reds and blues. It’s so _Dillon_ , Mat can’t help but think every time he looks, which is often.

He can’t help it. He can’t help running the tips of his fingers across stylized feathers, the ends of ribbons curling down to his ribs.

It’s the biggest soulmark he’s ever seen, he thinks. The biggest he’s seen that isn’t a family mark. It makes him nervous sometimes, the way it seems like it’s still growing.

\---

“Honey, I’m home!”

Mat’s dozing in the living room when Dillon lets himself into his apartment and he hauls himself up to blink owlishly over the back of the couch. Dillon’s there, grinning with a bag of take out.

“Date night, baby,” he says, beaming as he comes in and throws himself onto the couch next to Mat.

Mat hums and tilts his head against Dillon’s shoulder. He doesn’t miss the way Dillon tenses but he tries to ignore it. Dillon will talk to him when he feels like it. When he’s ready, or whatever.

Dillon’s laying out containers of food and Mat watches the shift of muscles under tattooed forearms. Mat’s asked before, which pictures are soulmarks. Which are tattoos. He knows Dillon’s got so many soulmarks now that he probably couldn’t remember the stories to each one if he tried but he also he knows that Dillon’s gone out of his way to cover some.

Mat knows them all by heart now, anyway. He hasn’t seen them change much in the last year, really, apart from a mark Mat’s pretty sure was Anton’s moving down Dillon’s stomach, a little further from his heart.

It’s satisfying, maybe.

Dillon sets a plate down in front of Mat and Mat blinks. Then he reaches out and carefully takes Dillon’s wrist in his hand. Dillon flinches and looks up at him and he’s smiling but Mat catches the flash of _something_ in his eyes before he can cover it up.

“Hi,” says Dillon, and he tries to pull his arm back.

Mat doesn’t let him, holds tighter to Dillon’s wrist and pulls until his arm is stretched awkwardly across his chest. There’s something new on Dillon’s upper arm, something orange-gold and the colour is familiar but it definitely hadn't been there before.

“Mat,” Dillon starts, but Mat’s climbing into his lap, shoving his shirt up before he can say anything else.

It’s…

Mat wants to throw up. He wants to throw up or run away or fucking throw himself off his balcony.

His flowers are gone.

Dillon’s chest had been a brilliant spread of marigolds before, vivid gold and orange and red in a burst of sunny colour and Mat had loved them, he’d never loved his own flowers so much on anyone else.

All that’s left now are petals. A couple across Dillon’s shoulder. One resting almost directly in his clavicle. Two tiny ones on his ribcage.

“Mat,” Dillon says again. Mat presses his palm over Dillon’s heart like he can bring them back if he just touches him again. When he moves his hand it’s still empty space. One petal where his hand had been. “I haven’t - nothing’s-,”

“When were you going to tell me?” Mat asks quietly. His voice is thick and he never really notices his own accent but that’s thicker now too.

Dillon carefully reaches up and grasps Mat’s wrists, pulls them away so his shirt falls down again. Looks Mat in the eye. “I didn’t know how,” he whispers raggedly. “I didn’t know how to show you or tell you or-,”

“They’re gone?” Mat says and it comes out like a whimper, like a question, like desperation and he really does think he might cry. He hasn’t cried in months, not in so long and it’s never been because of Dillon.

He’d been so happy. Dillon had made him so happy.

He sits back on Dillon’s knees and absently rests a hand over his own heart. Dillon makes a wounded sound.

“This doesn’t change anything,” he hisses and his hand covers Mat’s so neatly, presses it more firmly into Mat’s chest. For a second it feels like he’s going to try and pull Mat’s hand away, replace it with his own. But he just leaves it there, loosely clasped over Mat’s fingers. His other hand wraps around Mat’s hip, fingertips digging into his skin and for a second Mat thinks about where Dillon’s mark _used_ to be.

Mat wonders distantly if Dillon’s mark on him has changed or moved. He doesn’t think it has. He doesn’t think he feels any differently about Dillon.

He wonders if Dillon _wants_ it to have moved.

“I love you, though,” Mat says weakly. “I didn’t… I _love_ you.”

Dillon makes that same wounded noise and he lets go of Mat’s hand to cup the back of his head. “I know, I, Mat, I love you too, so much-,”

“You don’t though,” says Mat and it comes out vaguely astonished.

He realizes abruptly he doesn’t want to be touched. He doesn’t want Dillon’s hands on him and it’s the first time he’s ever felt like this. His stomach is turning over and over and he still kind of wants to throw up.

He pulls away. He kneels up and shuffles back and clambers off of Dillon, off the couch.

“Mat, please.” Dillon’s fingers catch on his hip again, try to wrap up in his shirt and pull him back but Mat’s already taking off across his apartment, shoving into his bathroom and slamming the door and locking it behind him.

He stands there for a long moment that drags and drags. Stares at himself in the mirror. Dillon’s knocking on the door but Mat doesn’t react.

He strips off his shirt and then he _laughs_ because he doesn’t know what else to do.

The hourglass has run out. Dillon’s mark is still there, still huge and vibrant and beautiful but all the sand in the hourglass has fallen to the bottom and Mat doesn’t exactly fall but he goes to the ground more rapidly than he’d expected.

Dillon’s talking outside the bathroom door, pleading really. It sounds like he might be crying. Babbling about how he still loves Mat. How they can still make this work.

Mat presses his forehead to his knees and he doesn’t say anything.


End file.
